drtbear1967
Musclechemistry Board Certified Member
Having structure is valuable, but your plans must be applied with flexibility. Perfect is the enemy of good. Sometimes the equipment you want isn't available. Other times, your elbows refuse to cooperate. These bad days can't be entirely avoided, but they can be managed.
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Be proactive. This requires the expectation that things will go wrong no matter how perfect your plan is. You need to have the willingness to deviate when circumstances require. These imperfect alternatives aren't nearly as costly as you might imagine, and they're much better than bailing on your workout altogether.
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For example, if the bench press station is taken and you're forced to do dumbbell benches, floor presses or even machine presses, at a minimum you'll derive nearly as much benefit, and, in many cases, more benefit. If you had planned on doing 5 sets of chins, but after the second set your wife texts to tell you she needs you back for a minor household emergency, guess what? Those 2 sets deliver about 80% of the benefit the 5 sets would have, and, if you tend towards overtraining, you'll actually be better off than if you'd done your full session.
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The training process is like driving down a straight road. The act of driving straight, when examined more closely, actually involves constant, small, course corrections. Many people have the unspoken assumption that a perfect plan somehow compensates for a lack of applied effort. But the reverse is closer to the truth. Massive, consistent, hard effort applied to an "iffy" program will deliver better results than a sketchy work ethic coupled with a perfect program.
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Be proactive. This requires the expectation that things will go wrong no matter how perfect your plan is. You need to have the willingness to deviate when circumstances require. These imperfect alternatives aren't nearly as costly as you might imagine, and they're much better than bailing on your workout altogether.
-
For example, if the bench press station is taken and you're forced to do dumbbell benches, floor presses or even machine presses, at a minimum you'll derive nearly as much benefit, and, in many cases, more benefit. If you had planned on doing 5 sets of chins, but after the second set your wife texts to tell you she needs you back for a minor household emergency, guess what? Those 2 sets deliver about 80% of the benefit the 5 sets would have, and, if you tend towards overtraining, you'll actually be better off than if you'd done your full session.
-
The training process is like driving down a straight road. The act of driving straight, when examined more closely, actually involves constant, small, course corrections. Many people have the unspoken assumption that a perfect plan somehow compensates for a lack of applied effort. But the reverse is closer to the truth. Massive, consistent, hard effort applied to an "iffy" program will deliver better results than a sketchy work ethic coupled with a perfect program.
